Ignacio Ortinez

Ignacio Ortinez has more than 30 years of professional experience in landscape architecture, urban planning/design, and sustainable agriculture.  During those years, he has been working in the United States, Europe and for the last 12 years his focus has been in the Asia region.  He is currently based in Bangkok, where he established estudioOCA office in Asia, directing a design and planning office, that besides landscape architecture, sustainable design, and planning, collaborates as well with water resources engineers, environmental scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and other social scientists. estudioOCA team, together with its California registered non-profit organization, Urban Climate Resilient Infrastructure & Strategic Planning (UCRISP), have been focusing on sustainable climate change resilience strategies, including flood and drought mitigation, in urban and rural areas.

Ignacio, has a combined background in landscape architecture, entomology, horticulture, and sustainable agriculture, and that has had a strong professional influence in his work.  For more than 30 years, applied ecology, and the study and research of sustainable natural systems as models for the design of climate resilient sustainable strategies, does play a fundamental part in the understanding and conception of the projects he has been involved in.  

His background, skills and experiences, include the study of agroecological systems, when he first studied organic agriculture, and agroecology, between 1986 and 1988 and continued in 1989 while he obtained at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK a Master of Science in Agriculture, with an specialization in Applied Entomology, where he had the opportunity to study and research, from a scientific perspective, diverse issues, including biological control and the ecology of agricultural systems.  In particular, one of his studies, research interest and focus was on insect ecology, focusing on the relevance of insects as bioindicators of the health of agricultural systems.   

Since 2007, Ignacio has been working as principal of estudioOCA, and previously for more than 20 years while working professionally in the United States, in landscape architecture offices and construction, he has participated in the design of numerous projects, including many LEED certified projects. Ignacio has been invited to talk at universities, government institutions, and international events, in Asia and the Americas about sustainable development, landscape, nature based solutions, including green infrastructure. In 2017, he was invited, as Subject Matter Expert (SME) on green infrastructure, at the Asian Development Bank-Rockefeller Foundation, Global Resilience Academy in Bangkok.

After the development, in 2017, of The Rockefeller Foundation founded project, Green Infrastructure Master Plan for Udon Thani, Ignacio has led the design and development of relevant international projects and initiatives, all of them, focusing on developing strong sustainable design, development, and strategies, focusing on the international development and implementation of nature-based solutions systems, such as green infrastructure, with a special focus on the Asia region, working with a diverse range international partner institutions including, Asian Development Bank, Global Green Growth Institute,  IUCN, US Army Corps of Engineers, GIZ, and others.